Inclusion and Illusion

This chapter is a comparative empirical study of the spatial logic of informal urbanism in Manila and Jakarta at the scale of a walkable urban district. Through mapping, photographic analysis and spatial ethnography, we show how informal urbanism is paradoxically both excluded and included—separated from, yet integrated with, the formalized city. We show the ways spatial governance is differently enforced in different neighbourhoods—informal urbanism is included if and where it does not disturb the illusion of the formal city.